<p><b>Shortlisted for the Booker Prize</b><br><b>Longlisted for the </b><b>Women's Prize for Fiction</b><br><b>A <i>New York Times</i> Notable Book of the Year</b><br><b>Named a Best Book of the Year by <i>The Guardian</i>, NPR, and <i>Kirkus</i><br><br></b><b>A taut, enthralling first novel about grief, sisterhood, and a young athleteÂ’s struggle to transcend herself.</b><br><br>Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo.<br><br>But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a thirteen-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe. <br><br>An indelible coming-of-age story, Chetna MarooÂ’s first novel captures the ordinary and annihilates it with beauty. <i>Western Lane</i> is a valentine to innocence, to the closeness of sisterhood, to the strange ways we come to know ourselves and each other.</p>
